This invention relates to three-dimensional displays and more particularly to a display for autostereoscopic viewing.
A range of display technologies currently exists to produce near 3-D images. Stereoscopic displays are the most common at present. Stereoscopic displays utilize glasses that must be worn to generate the stereoscopic image and the image viewpoint is unalterable. Several forms of this technology exist including anaglyphic, polarization, or alternate-frame 3-D displays. The differences are found in the types of glasses used to separate the images to each eye.
Autostereoscopic displays produce 3-D images without specialized glasses but they are not without limitations. Parallax based autostereoscopic display technologies require the viewer to be seated at particular locations in order to produce the stereoscopic effect which limits the number and orientation of viewers. Lenticular lens based autostereoscopic displays suffer from reduced resolution. Present autostereoscopic display technologies are able only to produce horizontal parallax for multiple viewers, not vertical parallax. Vertical parallax can be accomplished only for a single viewer using eye tracking. The image is altered to produce the vertical parallax for the single viewer based on a known eye location. The result is a distorted image for all other viewers.